Proprietary vs standard designs.(ednasia.comment)

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Which designs are more capable of leading to profits: proprietary or standard? To a great extent PCs owe their phenomenal growth to standardization, which enable using single software application across systems from multiple vendors. The PC took an overwhelming lead in market share over the Macintosh because unlike PC design, Macintosh design was proprietary by intent.

Ironically, the company primarily responsible for standardizing PC design is IBM, which all through its history has believed in profitability through proprietary designs. By licensing its PC design to other vendors, IBM ushered in the era of IBM-compatible PCs--an era still continuing. IBM's logic for departing from its traditional faith in proprietary designs was simple: Licensing the PC design to other vendors would increase PC population that would increase software development that would, in turn, widen PC utility and market, and ultimately bring more profit to IBM. …

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